The Five Minute Rule
I’m travelling to a place called Old Age
Suddenly I am old. It is unclear how this situation arose, but it is undeniable.
I first started to notice last summer when I had lunch with Jeff, a friend from law school which we attended together, 40 years ago.
“Did I say forty, enough years to go from infancy to menopause?’
But, law school was only a portion of my adult life. I sloughed the uncomfortable feelings off to Jeff being at least ten years older than I, so in my mind, he was entitled to be old, and I was not yet there. As I have said before, denial is a wonderful panacea especially when our youth is in the rear-view mirror.
“Just don’t look in the mirror,” I say to myself.
Jeff, who earned the nickname “Geffe” during law school, explained that he now has a 5-minute rule when he meets up with old (“did I say “old” again?”) friends. The rule limits discussion about personal health issues to 5 minutes, and then the conversation must focus on other topics.
So, as we met at our favorite restaurant, and reveled in the beautiful afternoon in Santa Barbara, California, we quickly recapped the ailments and ills of the past year. Each of us had suffered a fracture and surgery. Then we discussed the mundane issues of lipids, blood sugar, and blood pressure; ailments modern medicine has contrived to placate the pharmaceutical industry. “Whew,” we made it in about 4 minutes, 45 seconds.
However, as our conversation meandered to old times (again, I said “old”), health issues crept up in the most insidious of ways. Geffe asked the waiter if one item on the menu was spicy; he then digressed into a description of his stomach issues. I realized I had not visited the restroom as intended before we were seated, and suddenly I had to run for it; later I explained to Geffe the age-related reasons why, as usual I over-shared.
Individuals such as Geffe and I who are young at heart, usually try to limit health- related conversations. But the fact is old age cannot be hidden; it is everywhere. It is written on our faces; it is the color of our hair, it is the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, and the thrill of seeing each other again because you never know when it may be the last time.
Old age is well-worn smiles, and dusty warm memories ready for the telling once again. Old age is what binds us together.
Jeff and I rehashed our favorite memories, ones which we could only appreciate because we experienced them years ago, together. One of his favorite memories of me is when I realized too late that another man in the sauna was naked. I was newly divorced, and not inclined to be romantic. My clumsy exit, and the squeal of my tires down the steep driveway, are indelibly etched in both of our memories.
One of my favorite memories of Jeff was when I met his son, Leyland, for the first time. Leyland was a kind, sweet, little boy who was off-kilter due to his parent’s divorce. Eager to see his dad happy, he asked too many questions of me too soon. “Sorry Leyland, I’m newly divorced and not ready to move on. I love your dad, and shall always love your dad.” While Jeff and I never married, we still love each other. Leyland turned out to be a carbon copy of his father.
As I said goodbye to Geffe, I turned to watch him walk slowly away with his shiny new cane. His hip replacement had not gone as planned, but he is happy as ever and feels as though he is aging well.
In the months after, I tried to apply the 5-minute rule to most every appropriate conversation. I attend Masters swimming practice several times per week, which is a prime opportunity to brag or complain about one’s body. Mostly, these days we complain. However, it’s rarely possible to get 5 total minutes in; “what a relief.”
Swimming practice involves lots of swimming and little rest. The usual interval of rest is about 20 seconds, or half a minute if one is a fast swimmer. Rest periods are great for sharing nuggets of health information: “Andy, how’s your shoulder?”, or “great to see you after that terrible bout of pneumonia.”
Nonetheless, swimmers are hyper-sensitive to their physical conditions, and those of us who are “old,” share lanes together, memories together, and we are experts at convincing ourselves we are all aging well and gracefully. Except, of course, that beautiful fall I took on the pool deck, resulting in four fractures and three surgeries. The judge’s score for that fall was 9.5. I will say, that my recovery has been “somewhat graceful”; I tell myself. “Keep on lying to yourself, it works!”
Most frequently we apply the 5-minute rule when dining with friends. When the conversation begins, I am tempted to start a timer. Nowadays though, we’re keen on invoking the rule. It’s comical to watch our hurried if not frantic conversations in a game of one-upmanship. Often it is difficult to share all we want to discuss in just five minutes unless you raise your voice and talk really fast.
Because of my husband’s recent diagnosis of Parkinson’s, his news serves as a huge trump in any conversation.
“I said trump. I did not mean our former US president; it’s a bridge term most youngins wouldn’t understand. Bridge? What’s that, a road that serves as a passage over water?”
The word “Parkinson’s” can silence even the loudest crowd; most people yield what remains of the 5 minutes to my husband. At this moment, within our circle of friends, Parkinson’s is the most serious yet interesting ailment.
There are 3 exceptions to the five-minute rule.
First, golf. How can you spend four or more hours together with 3 similarly old women, and only talk for 5 minutes about health? I do not enjoy gossip, and we can only talk about the weather for so long. Discussion of religion and politics ruins most golf games. So, what do you talk about for 4 or more hours? Naturally, the health of ourselves, and our loved ones becomes a safe, neutral topic; especially if we golf-mates have not seen each other for a while.
Just this week, my dear friend returned from cancer treatment; she has been absent from the links for several months. We have a regular foursome. The first nine holes revolved around cancer treatment, while the second nine holes revolved around Parkinson’s.
Afterward, drinks and snacks led to a discussion about plastic surgery, specifically neck lifts. I am inclined to give plastic surgery a mulligan from the 5-minute rule, although golf already got a pass. Technically, now during this conversation, we were socializing, not golfing, so the rule was applied.
It was a brief discussion, ending with us deciding to take a girl’s trip to golf, and then together visit a Plastic Surgeon, whose office is several hours away.
“Productive conversation,” I say to myself, “Great use of the 5-minute rule.”
Second, the 5-minute rule cannot be enforced in any medical setting. It is obvious that our stage for describing the minute details of our corpus is set when we lay flat on the examination table. Anything goes during the discussion with the doctor. Unlimited time discussing unlimited ailments must be heavenly for hypochondriacs.
The third exception, or rather a point of clarification, is when a conversation is about someone else. We have not been able to delineate an exact rule for this circumstance, but it’s important to talk about our other friends too. A process of illness and aging surrounds us, and we are part of a generation that is encountering ailments arising from us rounding the sun too many times. But we are doing this together.
Our community serves as solace and as a resource for not reinventing the wheel when it comes to treatment options that may be helpful to others. For me, it’s important to listen to every word, especially if the topic concerns Parkinson’s. So, the 5-minute rule is not usually invoked in these situations.
Humor aside, without knowing it, I’ve entered a stage of life where I am saying good-bye to loved ones more frequently than I am saying hello. This does not feel good, and I’m starting to realize there is no stage in life after this one. Just in the past year, I’ve lost friends to Lewy Body dementia, Frontal Temporal Lobe Dementia, Sarcoma, Kidney failure, and Cancer. While we each were loosely the same age, I regret missing an opportunity to have a 5-minute conversation with these loved ones before they passed. Mistakenly, I thought we had more time.
The snarky existence of the 5-minute rule is a symbol of what we have become, and what we are becoming. Are we old? Perhaps not. Are we sick? Perhaps not. Are we lucky, “of course,” we all agree.
Do we love one another and continue to cherish moments together outside of the doctor’s office, hospital, or mortuary? Of course. For me, aging is not a solitary venture; it is a group struggle. I am up for it. I am not old; I’m just traveling there.
